Strasbourg - Egon Krenz, East Germany's last communist leader lost an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights yesterday against his manslaughter conviction for shootings along the Berlin Wall.
The court's Grand Chamber of 17 judges ruled unanimously that there had been no breach of East German or international law in convictions imposed on Egon Krenz and two other former senior officials of the East German state.
It also rejected a similar appeal by a former East German border guard whose case had been considered alongside that of Krenz and his two colleagues - the former defence minister Gen Heinz Kessler and his deputy, Mr Fritz Streletz. A court in Berlin ruled in 1999 that Krenz should serve six and a half years in jail for four shootings along the Berlin Wall in the 1980s. Krenz said after the ruling: "For me it will be interesting how the German government deals with the politicians from Russia who had responsibility for the Soviet Union. There my military commander was [Mr Mikhail] Gorbachev."